Singh and her mother, Vicky Singh, came out to the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City with friends, beginning their shopping shortly after midnight and by 5 a.m. had snagged a pile of merchandise, mostly shoes.

Stores typically open in the wee hours of the morning on the day after U.S. Thanksgiving that's named Black Friday because it's traditionally when retailers turn a profit for the year. But after testing how shoppers would respond to earlier hours last year, stores such as Target and Toys R Us this year opened as early as Thursday evening.

Like tom-toms in the shopping jungle, Randall Rosenberg tweeted out the news in the Boston area: $1.96 DVDs at Walmart.

A labour alliance in Framington, Mass., lit up the night shopping sidewalk with a “Support Walmart Workers” banner in solidarity with employees of the retail chain compelled to cut short their family holiday and work.

OUR Walmart, a coalition of groups backing the Walmart workers strike, told the Star on Friday that hundreds of employees had walked out in Miami, Dallas, Wisconsin and the California Bay area starting Thursday night.

They were anticipating walkouts in more than 100 U.S. cities, a spokeswoman said. In some cases, a lone worker walked out in a symbolic protest.

The walkout, the first in the United States against the retail chain, is “in protest against the company’s attempts to silence workers who speak out for better jobs,” the coalition said in a statement.

Los Angeles Police have been laying the security groundwork for Black Friday for weeks, visiting stores to discuss “the psychology of the frantic shopper.”

In the San Fernando Valley, police had put together detailed tactical plans with mobile command posts for each large shopping centre, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“For some people, shopping is a competitive sport,” a police spokesman told the Times. “But it should not be a contact sport.”

“They offer only 10 TV sets at a ridiculously low price,” Aimee Drolet Rossi, a consumer psychologist at the Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles, told the newspaper. “It's really no surprise that people get upset when they don't get one.”

California shopping has a reputation for brutality. A determined bargain hunter unleashed pepper spray in a Walmart in Los Angeles last year, injuring two dozen people.

Two men were killed in a Black Friday gunfight at a California Toys R Us in 2008. That same year, a Walmart employee in Long Island was trampled to death by crowds surging through the glass doors.

About 11,000 shoppers were in lines wrapped around Macy's flagship store in New York City's Herald Square when it opened at midnight.

A few hours later at about 3:30 a.m. at a nearby Toys R Us in New York's Times Square, the scene was a bit calmer.

Elizabeth Garcia, 17, a sales rep from the city's Bronx borough, was shopping for toys for her three children ages 3, 5 and 7. She said she specifically decided on the later shopping start to avoid the crowds on Thanksgiving.

Last year, she almost got into a fight over a Tinker Bell couch. “This year I wasn't about to kill people.”

According to an International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs survey of 1,000 consumers conducted this month, about 17 per cent of shoppers planned to start on Thursday, up from 16 per cent last year when retailers were testing the earlier hours.

Meanwhile, 33 per cent intended to shop on Black Friday, down one percentage point from last year. Overall, it's estimated that sales on Black Friday will be up 3.8 per cent to $11.4 billion this year.

The earlier hours are an effort by stores to make shopping as convenient as possible for Americans. Retailers fear won't spend freely during the two-month holiday season in November and December because of economic uncertainty.

From the consumers’ point of view, the fear is of high unemployment and a package of tax increases and spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff” that will take effect in January unless the U.S. Congress passes a budget deal by then.

Also putting pressure on brick-and-mortar stores is the growing popularity and convenience of shopping on websites, which can make up to 40 per cent of their annual revenue during the holiday shopping season.

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, estimates that overall sales in November and December will rise 4.1 per cent this year to $586.1 billion, or about flat with last year's growth. But the online part of that is expected to rise 15 per cent to $68.4 billion, according to Forrester Research.

Some U.S. stores tested the earlier hours last year, but this year more retailers opened their doors late on Thanksgiving Thursday or at midnight on Black Friday. The old-fashioned free layaways are finding a new allure among retailers in 2012, as is free shipping, matching the cheaper prices of online rivals.

“Every retailer wants to beat everyone else,” said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, a research firm based in Charleston, S.C. “Shoppers love it.”

“I ate my turkey dinner and came right here,” said Rasheed Ali, a 23-year-old student in New York City who bought a 50-inch Westinghouse TV for $349 and a Singer sewing machine for $50 at a Target in New York City's East Harlem neighbourhood that opened at 9 p.m. on Thursday.

“Then I'm going home and eating more.”

Carey Maguire, 33, and her sister Caitlyn Maguire, 21, showed up at the same Target about two hours before it opened. Their goal was to buy several Nook tablet computers, which were on sale for $49. But while waiting in line they were also using their iPhone to do some online buying at rival stores.

“If you're going to spend, I want to make it worth it,” said Caitlyn, a college student.

By Thursday afternoon, there were 11 shoppers in a four-tent encampment outside a Best Buy store near Ann Arbor, Mich., that opened at midnight. The purpose of their wait? A $179 40-inch Toshiba LCD television is worth missing Thanksgiving dinner at home.

Jackie Berg, 26, of Ann Arbor, arrived first with her stepson and a friend Wednesday afternoon, seeking three of the televisions. The deal makes the TVs $240 less than their normal price, so Berg says that she'll save more than $700.

“We'll miss the actual being there with family, but we'll have the rest of the weekend for that,” she said.

Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report. D'Innocenzio reported from New York City. Krisher reported from Ann Arbor, Mich., and Toledo, Ohio. With files from Lesley Ciarula Taylor.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.